Sunday, August 31, 2008

10:29 AM / 31 August

Chiron by All That Remains


Damn. I can't wait for ATR's new album. Not as badly as the new Metallica one, but I'm just curious as to how it'll sound like. I mean Oli Herbert is a crazy guitarist. He looks like Odin and plays guitar like no other. And Mike Martin use to study guitar under Oli Herbert so I guess that helps in creating a close playing style between them. And come on, there's nothing fiercer than Jeanne Sagan. And thank goodness they finally have a proper drummer now. They've been having to go through a lot of them on the previous album. And Jason Costa is unique since he grips his sticks more like a jazz drummer would. Maybe I should try that sometime. Anyway, their new album will be titled 'Overcome' and is due to be released on 16 September.
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Friday, August 29, 2008

11:25 PM / 28 August

3 days left 'til the fasting month starts. Can't wait. Really. My body's already anticipating the arrival of Ramadhan. However it's also 3 days to the start of TEP. No rest for the wicked I guess. And hell yeah I'm wicked.

One thing that I've really been wanting to do for quite some time is to talk about the US Presidential Elections, in particular the naming of Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic Presidential Candidate.

Towards the tail-end of my second year there was an ICA for International Business where we just had to analyse some current issue that would affect international trade. My group did an analysis on the US Presidential Race. Okay it was more of me forcing the topic on my group, but the other ideas were boring. I think.

Back to the topic at hand. At that point, the presidential race was still in its earlier stages. Both Democrats and Republicans still had quite a few nominees running gunning for the seat and there was no definite idea of who was going to represent each party since each party could only submit one candidate for the presidential elections.

Since we had to focus on international trade we looked at their stand on the subject matter at hand. Everybody may be gunning for a Democrat mainly because of the situation in Iraq and the domestic economical situation of the US. But plainly in terms of international trade, it was not necessarily the better choice. This is also if it's in the POV of a foreign country.

You see, Democrats are not generally in favor of Free Trade. What they support is the concept of Fair Trade. Free Trade in its simplistic term is barrier-free trade between countries. No tariffs or quotas. Fair Trade on the other hand means that a country should have the right to protect the interests of their local producers and traders. This includes controlling inflow of foreign-produced products which are usually cheaper than locally-produced goods.

Proof includes the fact that in President Bill Clinton's 8 years in office only one real FTA was signed, that being the North American FTA (NAFTA). President Bush on the other hand installed about 4 or 5 FTAs one of which is the Singapore-US FTA. Even more recently, 187 Democrats in the recently elected House of Representatives were against President Bush's proposed Central American FTA (CAFTA). So Democrats will not really want to sign an FTA especially if there are no tangible benefits for the US.

What exactly does this mean? Well, if you're a producer looking to export your products to the US, its gonna be hard to go in barrier-free. Especially if you are hoping for your country to get an FTA with the US under the new presidency. And since US is pretty much the largest consuming country in the world (which is pretty much the reason why they have such a massive trade deficit), which exporter would not want a piece of that pie?

But looking back at the overly massive figure that is the US Trade Deficit, this could be the right thing for the US. Control influx of imports from other nations and try to kickstart their own export industry. It will roll consumer dollars back into the hands of the US and possibly counteract the inflation that is dwindling the US dollar's value. This may strengthen their economy and cross my fingers will slowdown the recession. A recession is inevitable, but at least this may lessen the impact. Hopefully.

And I also have a sneaking suspicion that the high oil prices are also indirectly affected by a weak US dollar. My lecturer told me that the recent drop in oil prices is due mainly to recession fears so it might seem like a paradox, but in my humble opinion, a stronger US dollar could be more of a double-positive than a cancel-out.

But back to the candidate discussion. I'm not gonna talk about McCain 'cause he is a douchebag and possibly a step backward from Bush. No really. He was the worst possible Republican to get chosen.  My group actually predicted Sen. Hillary Clinton to be nominated since she was leading the polls at that time. She also voted for the NAFTA to be enacted back when her husband was President. Though this is not necessarily a sign of bias since at that time it actually seemed advantageous to enact the FTA. And also, her experience was what made us back her for the nomination. But I guess she ran out of steam and Obama's beliefs and charisma started to shine. It's a bit risky mainly due to the fact that Obama does lack some experience. But still, a Democratic victory should be on the cards.

Well, that's my 2 cents worth. I was a bit disappointed that Sen. Clinton did not win the nomination but not overly disappointed since Obama is a good candidate too. Still, it would have been good to see a woman in charge of the US.

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Monday, August 25, 2008

11:54AM / 25 August

Since U Been Gone

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Friday, August 22, 2008

4:58 AM / 22 August

logical conclusion

Best Math Answer hands down. Beats the lame find x pics hands down. The power of logic shall kill us all. Or at least kill those who are stupid enough. Lol
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Monday, August 18, 2008

2:51PM / 18 August

Best song from the region hands down.

Dangdut Is The Music Of My Country by Project Pop



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Thursday, August 14, 2008

8:07 PM / 14 August

Clouds Over California by Devildriver




I'm not really into Devildriver that much. This is pretty much their only song I've really listened to or liked mainly due to the opening guitar lick after about a few bars of the intro.
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

5:27 PM / 12 August

Jamie All Over by Mayday Parade

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Thursday, August 07, 2008

7:25 PM / 7 August

Hmmm.... What to say. What to say.

I'm pretty much done with 90% of this semester. All I have left are 2 exams. One on the 20th and another on the 27th. So I don't really have to start stressing myself out now.

I mean seriously, the projects this past semester was enough to make anyone scream. Let me list out all that I had to do.

- Entrepreneurship: Had to come up with a viable business plan which was to be presented in front of industry people. Deliverables included a mock-up of our product, a website, posters, flyers, brochures, actual feasible financial plans and a sound marketing plan.
   
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Events On The Move:EVOM

- Enterprise Application Integration Project: Had to build a full-on website with Google Map and AJAX functionality.

- J2EE: This I have to give mad props to my group. 'cause I didn't do much for this one. Had to build a blog for this assignment

- Global Supply Chain Management: Had to do a study into the Supply Chain methods of Exxon Mobil

- Internet Marketing: Had to do an individual report on the internet marketing strategies of Vans.com.

- Internet Marketing: Had to do another group report and presentation to improve Sheng Siong Supermarket's web presence. Had to build a mock-up of the planned web site

So it seems like just six projects. But Entrepreneurship and EAIPJ lasted the whole semester. So focus kinda gets thrown around a lot when you have to manage your time around these 2 projects. Oh yeah and not to mention that somewhere in all those projects 4 websites were made. Thank God I made it through all these in one piece.

Study break is here. Too bad I don't got no holidays this semester. After my last paper, it's off to do my Teaching Enterprise Project and my Industrial Placement Program. To be frank, life in NYP was never easy but damn it was hella worth the ride.

Now with some time on my hands I can go back to studying Mixed Martial Arts. I tried doing a bit of it this past semester but skool kinda drowned it out. I have yet to finish watching Bas Rutten's career fights. There's about 3+ hours of footage in there. Good ones I might add.

I just got finished watching Never Back Down. Thought I could use it to get me back into the MMA mood. It's a good movie and I've been looking forward to watching it for a long time. Though the fights are nothing like those in real MMA. For instance, the protagonist's (whoever his name was) kicks were too wild. And some of the submissions pulled off were just crazy. I mean it's all good for the movie screens but I prefer the real thing.

Like for instance this fight right here.

Bas Rutten vs Jason Delucia (Pancrase)


Bas Rutten is my favourite fighter and there's nothing better than learning from the fighter himself. I've never met him, but at least his collection of career fights has him explaining what was going through his head during the fight.

This match is wicked mainly cause of how methodical it all seems. For those of you who don't know, Pancrase does not allow closed-fist punches to the head. So you can only used open palm slaps to the head but you can still punch the body.

This match was pretty much the first match where I learned something about MMA or any fight sport in general. The liver is the biggest organ in the torso and hitting the liver spot-on is way more painful than a knockout because when you get knocked-out you don't feel any pain during the duration when you are out. With a liver shot you feel it during and after you get hit.

Argh. I think I'm gonna go back to pestering my dad to get me a punching bag and some MMA gloves.


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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

3:19 AM / 5 August


2 Days After My Birthday it Arrives...
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